Change Tracking in MDM

[Former Member]

Does MDM 5.5 SP3 offer field level change tracking?

Example

In PRODUCTS repository, let us assume we have the following fields:

SKU

Description

List Price

Cost Price.

A user may change any number of records. In Record1 lets say he changed the Cost Price.

In Record2 he changed, Description.

Does MDM offer field level change tracking. i.e.

When we syndiate the records, we need to syndicate only Cost Price (Changed Field) for Record1 and

Description (Changed Field) for Record2.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Ads.

[Former Member]

Hi Adhappan,

Syndicator is not equipped with field level net change tracking abilities yet. So, even if you the fields you are syndicating are A, B, and C, and field D on this record changed, syndicator will send the record out.

We have a similar situation, and here is how we handled:

1. Create change timestamps for groups of fields- for instance if you have to send 4 fields to legacy, and you want to send the record only when those 4 fields change, create a change timestamp just for the four.

2. In the syndicator, use the change timestamp compared to today's date to identify if something changed or not.

Thanks

Savi

[Former Member]

The change tracking feature of MDM is unrelated to what you're looking for.

You could suppress all unchanged records from syndication using a standard MDM Syndicator feature (see: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_mdmgds55/helpdata/en/d9/049d2d878e4c9bb7a41a9578e54bec/frameset.htm)

This will syndicate the entire record though. If the values of the rest of the fields remain intact, what's the business need to syndicate only changed records?

[Former Member]

Unfortunately the legacy system has been written in such a way that it expects separate files for each and every changed fields.

The legacy system is expecting the SKU as primary key and the changed field only.

If Item Description and Price changed, then the legacy system expects two separate files.

First File - SKU and Description

Second File - SKU and Price.

Syndication of the entire changed record involves a big change to the legacy system and we want to avoid it.

[Former Member]

Hi,

To my knowledge , The only way you can get the changed field values is by writing the database query.

Database information regarding Change Tracking.

For each repository in MDM, at the DBMS level it will have 2 databases.

1.<repositoryname>_m000

2.<repositoryname>_z000

In <repositoryname>_z000, look for A2i_CM_History table. This table will maintain the change tracking details.

Thanks and Regards

Subbu

[Former Member]

Hi Thiagarajan,

MDM has Change tracking feature. You need to set a field to be enabled for Change trackinh in Console (Under Admin -> Change tracking). Please note the following with regards to change tracking:

1. You can enable the change tracking, but the tracked field's data is not visible anywhere in MDM's standard tools. You need to go to the underlying database in order to retrieve data before changing and data after changing for a field/record.

2. Change traking influences performance.

In your scenario, Syndicator has an option to Syndicate chanded data only. But, in this case you will get an entire record for which data is changed.

Please let me know in case you are looking for any additional details.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rajani Kumar

[Former Member]

Thanks Rajani for your prompt reply.

We have enabled the "Change Tracking" in Console at field level.

We do NOT want to syndicate the whole record which has changed. By using Suppress Techniques in Selection Criteria in Syndicator tool, we are able to syndicate the entire changed record.

We want to syndicate ONLY the changed fields and NOT the entire record. We are not able to do that.

Any thoughts on this?

I guess SDN has some server problems now. I will make sure you get rewarded for your earlier reply.

Thanks.

[Former Member]

Hi Thiagarajan,

I don't think that your requirement can be achieved using the Standard tools from MDM. Try to play at your DBMS level and you can always create some queries etc on the change tracking table in the underlying database.

Another problem which I could not understand is, are also planning to send key for each and every record along with the changed data? Otherwise, how you will be able to identify the changed record without key??

Regards,

Rajani Kumar